Salvation In the Sin
by FuckMePumps
Summary: [You loved me, didn't you?] What if he answered differently? Behind one story are countless others, a fabrication of the same moment in dissimilar words. It is up to us to decide which one is the truth, but those left aren't always lies. ScarXLust, 1shot.


**a/n: **I'm on a roll. Somebody DON'T stop me. Hehe, this is also my gift to myself. Happy birthday to me!

This fic, along with being written in second person, was composed to follow someone's trail of thought, so it may get confusing at times. Remember, it'll be like being in someone's MIND, and it's not often a really organized place. Oh yeah, and this is an AU, as you probably can already tell. Nevertheless, enjoy:)

**disclaimer: **I don't own Full Metal Alchemist, or 'Screaming Infidelities' by Dashboard Confessional.

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**_I'm missing your laugh, how did it break?  
And when did your eyes begin to look fake?  
I hope you're as happy as you're pretending…_**

Gunshots chasing after you, and the mindless military dogs right on your trail.

_She's_ with you, running alongside you. _She,_ who bears you a thousand painful memories; _she, _whom you desperately wish to be real; _she, _the burden of your flesh and blood. She's the breathing, but not truly living, sin of your soul. She is accusatory with her alabaster brow furrowed, because by helping the Elric boy you have doomed her chances of achieving the thing she wanted the most, and perhaps you have no idea there is another more tangible thing she covets with as much passion.

Then, you hear their wary shouts. You have caught their sights.

You dart ahead, but then, behind you, you feel her freeze in her place. Reason states that she is a Homunculus; the frailties of weaknesses of a human body are of no consequence to her, but in that moment where your world stopped spinning, so that didn't matter.

Without a second thought you move in front of her to serve as a shield, and the pain of the bullets sinking in your flesh was just another thorn among the countless wounds that encompassed your frame, and you get a strange premonition that you would have hurt more if she had been the one absorbing the consuming heat of the gunfire in her pale skin. After your sacrifice it seemed you cannot take anymore and your eyes roll to the back of your head and you fall to your knees, powerless.

Vaguely you see her extending fingernails pierce the soldiers, instantly killing them, then she's on your side and her arms are around you, putting you in close proximity once again. The contact is intoxicating, overwhelming, but you don't want her to let go, because even in this twisted, unusual form you've yearned for this for so long.

"You fool," she says, with traces of misplaced tenderness. "You knew it takes more than bullets to get rid of me." Logic must be laughing in your face; of course you knew, but you didn't care.

You groan and close your eyes, not as much for the bleeding holes in your chest than to avoid meeting her vixen stare. Because she could be condemning, mocking, and be cursing you for your idiocy, but she wasn't; she was the gentleness you never had.

"I couldn't control it," you respond with biting truth. "My damn body has a will of its own." But deep inside you, you didn't really regret it. You were even grateful for that one chance to defend her, because you didn't, couldn't, before.

You maintain your gaze into the distance, but even so you know her eyes softened, and yours almost did too.

"You…" Her silken tone gliding over the word with unguarded affection. _You, _I love _you_. "You loved me, didn't you?"

There were only two answers. What would it be?

She was not the woman that was never truly yours, the one you had foolishly pined for even after you witnessed her marriage to your own brother. That, in another life, one that was far away and would be far too absurd to try reaching for.

On the other hand, what was she, really, to him? She bore the face of the one he had loved, but she was someone else entirely. If he cannot have his brother's wife, would he settle for her as the consolation prize?

Neither was right, so he opted for the one that wasn't in the choices, the most implausible and fanciful of them all: "I might have, once."

That brought a half-smile, half-frown to her thin lips. This was the point of no return, the moment of reckoning. "Can you try to, again? For both of us?"

_For both of us. _So she wanted it as well then? Even though this was wrong and this was right at the same time, because there were nothing and yet everything that's stopping you, and holding you back. There was no brother, no family to let down, no society to restrain you, no law to break. But there was also how she wasn't even real, wasn't even human, didn't even have a soul. How could she want you the way your conflicting emotions do her?

_For (life, death, and the things in between) both (you, and me) of us (me, and you)._

That made it more complicated.

But one fact remained. And like your desire to protect her, the statement made its way from your mouth like a plague. This has tormented you for a lifetime and a day, and you cannot just forget it and wipe what's left away.

"You're not her."

The sentiment in her eyes bordered on sad. She knew she wasn't, she will never be; how could you be so cruel? You try to remember that she wasn't human (not human not human not HUman) but what is humanity? What does a soul do for us that makes us oh-so special? She is a Homunculus (crime against nature), but she feels, she wants to understand. That may not make her human, but that also separates her from the Homunculi. She isn't, but she wants to be.

Her hand lingered on your nape, her touch cold and fighting your warmth. In her dark eyes lay a plea; there were already a thousand lies and mistruths in your eternity, so what harm can another one do?

"We can pretend."

And with that, and a battlefield in your midst (or was that the other way around?), the sounds of war echoing in your ears, the stench of death and smoke reeking in your nostrils, and the crust of blood drying on your skin, she kissed you like it was heaven; and everything you can think about was that how in another place, in another time, in another life, you two could have been lovers, in the truest sense of the word, but not now, not here. Never here, because there is a universe and an infinity that can tear you apart.

Her lips are small and yielding, pressed against yours like a prayer, and somehow in the chaos of all this you taste on her tongue her desire to be human, despite the complete impossibilities of such a wish (all for you). She is earnest, begging for you to return the gesture with as much sensual fervor. You are in the middle of the desert, with the world crashing down around you; what do you have to lose?

And so you lean into the kiss, and if you were two other people there could have been tears drying on your cheeks (we're together, we're together, all that's important now is that we're _together_), but there is only blood, because nothing else could be between a sinner and a sin.

There could have been electricity protruding from the kiss, and shivers of pleasure exchanged, and you might even have inhaled her fleeting, enthralling scent, but your senses dulled until all you're aware of is how close you are, with her slim, ample body fitting in with the hardened edges and angles of yours, and she holds you with two hands and two arms and ten fingers, and she kisses like any woman would, and you cannot tell what makes her so different from a human being. She whispers beyond audibility, and maybe she does not really mean for you to hear her; maybe she'd just assuring herself that the memories are hers, that the wandering soul beyond the Gate is hers, and that you are hers, like a man to a woman and vise versa.

She draws back because nothing is perfect, and she looks at you with an expression of adoration your heart (your heart, a human heart) suddenly aches with knowledge that someone (half-human, half-dead and half-alive, Homunculus) must feel so much for you, and it is nothing more than you deserve.

"Thank you," she murmurs in your ear with breaths she doesn't need. "Thank you… for showing me what I'm not… and what I don't need to be." She leans you against a wall and the roughness of its stony texture was a light-year away from the soft down on her pale face and neck. It is only then it dawns on you, what she said: _I don't need to be human, I don't need to be _her, _I don't need to follow my master, I can be free, whatever that can mean for me._

"I won't become a bother to you any longer," she stands up and walks away, taking the enchantment with her.

"Wait," you call out, and she turns back. There are countless books you can fill with what you want, what you need to say, but they all die in the confines of your throat and besides, what do you really want done? Destiny had always been against you, and you have a mission to accomplish, and she's just the nameless enemy that wasn't quite so; what is left for you to say, really?

The corners of her lips tug upwards, curving into a none-smirk, and she laughs, tinged with mirth and bitterness. The sounds rings, high and broken in your ears.

"You don't have to play the game anymore; you don't have to make me believe." And she walks on, without looking back.

It takes you a moment to realize it, and the instant you do you want to scream her name until your voice grows hoarse, and pursue her like a hunter to a beautiful prey, and embrace her with the arms you lost and feel her like you never did before and persuade that its never too late even though it is, it is, but you desperately don't want it to be.

Because now you understand, and she does too; it was _never pretend.  
_

_**Your hair, it's everywhere  
Screaming infidelities, and taking it's wear…**_

**fin**

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**a/n: **Don't you just love ScarXLust? Well, I certainly do. Anyway, since I worked pretty hard on this thing and since it is my birthday, I'd appreciate it if you guys leave a little

_**REVIEW!**_


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